Abstract
Why do younger black males earn more relative to whites than do older black males? The literature offers two competing explanations. Smith and Welch suggest this pattern is evidence that employers are rewarding the improved skills of more recently, better-educated blacks. Lazear, and Duncan and Hoffman suggest that the pattern is the result of employer discrimination that prevents blacks from entering occupations that offer on-the-job training (OJT) and wage growth with experience. The competing views are tested by using the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience of Young Men to compare black and white earnings and regression estimates in two periods. Regression results for 1968 and 1978 indicate that, as the NLS cohort aged, only white males had an age-earnings profile exhibiting the positive effect of OJT. Over the period, education coefficients decreased for both groups with the reduction greatest in black coefficients. This suggests that the earnings effect of education is not as stable for blacks as it is for whites over the life cycle. Black-white earnings ratios were approximately the same in both periods. The results reported here support the explanations offered by Lazear and by Duncan and Hoffman, implying that policies focusing on eliminating racial differences in educational quality may be insufficient in improving the relative position of blacks over the life cycle.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.